Research Directions in Computer Science celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of MIT's Project MAC. It covers the full range of ongoing computer science research at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science and the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, both of which grew out of the original Project MAC. Leading researchers from the faculties and staffs of the laboratories highlight current research and future activities in multiprocessors and parallel computer architectures, in languages and systems for distributed computing, in intelligent systems (AI) and robotics, in complexity and learning theory, in software methodology, in programming language theory, in software for engineering research and education, and in the relation between computers and economic productivity. The contributors include Harold Abelson, Arvind, Rodney Brooks, David Clark, Fernando Corbato, William Daily, Michael Dertouzos, John Guttag, Berthold K. P. Horn, Barbara Liskov, Albert Meyer, Nicholas Negroponte, Marc Raibert, Ronald Rivest, Michael Sipser, Gerald Sussman, Peter Szolovits, and John Updike.

Includes bibliographical references and index

Where money and energy gather : a writer's view of a computer laboratory / John Updike -- On the evolution of computing and project MAC / Fernando J. Corbató -- Why programming is too hard and what to do about it / John V. Guttag -- The changing nature of computer networks / David D. Clark -- Challenges in distributed systems / Barbara H. Liskov -- The X window system / Robert W. Scheifler and James Gettys -- A dataflow approach to general purpose parallel computing / Arvind and Rishiyur S. Nikhil -- Fine-grain concurrent computing / William J. Dally -- Computers and productivity / Michael L. Dertouzos -- Beyond the desktop metaphor / Nicholas P. Negroponte -- Computation as a framework for engineering education / Harold Abelson

Theory of learning : what's hard and what's easy to learn / Ronald L. Rivest -- The limits of computation / Michael Sipser -- Intelligence without representation / Rodney A. Brooks -- Parallel networks for machine vision / Berthold K.P. Horn -- Knowledge-based systems / Peter Szolovits -- Legged robots / Marc H. Raibert -- Intelligence in scientific computing / Harold Abelson [and others] -- Highlights of a quarter century / Michael L. Dertouzos -- A timeline history of Project MAC / Peter Elias

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